


Eight Years In

by Perpetual Motion (perpetfic)



Category: Harry Potter - Rowling
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-03
Updated: 2010-07-03
Packaged: 2017-10-10 09:12:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/98034
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perpetfic/pseuds/Perpetual%20Motion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How time and blood can change things. (Written before Book 5.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Eight Years In

His father's voice hisses everything he already knows into his ear.

"Failure."  
"Coward."  
"Squib."  
"Traitor."

Draco closes his eyes, breathes deep, and takes a single step towards Neville. "Your hand, how is it?"

"As if you care." Neville's voice is almost on the same sneering level as Draco's used to be. Draco wonders suddenly if they have somehow switched places. He stands uncomfortable in his skin wanting to help. Neville sits bandaging his badly wounded hand and doesn't give him the time of day.

"Your father did this." Neville looks from Draco to his hand. "It was supposed to kill you."

"I know." Draco lifts his overlarge shirt up to reveal a scar running perfectly straight from the middle of his breastbone to just above his navel. He turns around to show the silvery scar that runs the length of his back. He lowers his shirt. "Signs of my disloyalty." Draco hears Neville snort and is surprised. He never would have expected the other man to make such a noise, but they're eight years into the war, and he's defected, so anything really is possible.

"Those are to old to have been done recently, even with healing spells." Neville speaks with a certainty he only used to have for plants.

Something rises up in Draco, some part of him that detests ignorant accusations, and feels the need to defend itself. He lets it loose just to feel something. "You think this is my first time disobeying him? My whole life has been building to this." His voice is much more neutral and calm than it sounds in his head. "I never wanted to be him. There's no noble reason behind it. I am not inherently good or any of that rubbish. I just didn't want to be him. He has no thoughts or ideas that he doesn't steal from others, and I wanted no part of that. There are hundreds of more marks than these, but he made them fade. He left me these as a reminder. It's his way of teaching a lesson."

Neville's eyes show no fear or remorse or curiosity. They wail with anger. "If you didn't want to be him, why be a Death Eater?" For an instant, a glimmer of the old, befuddled, sweetly curious Neville is sitting out in the open. He disappears. "Why help in the slaughter of hundreds of Muggles who don't even know we're here? Why try to blow up Hogwarts? Why duck behind *me* when *he* throws a knife at *you*? Why cower?"

Draco turns his hand palm up and presses his wand to the far corner of his palm. He jerks his wand across, right along his life line, and the magic burns and slices his hand open. "It's in my blood. It makes me a Malfoy." He grasps Neville's still bleeding hand and presses their palms together. Their blood mixes and smears, leaking onto their life lines and heart lines and trailing onto their wrists.

"What do you think this gets you?"

Draco pulls his hand away, inspects the blood, tries to guess what's not his. "Goodness. Hope. Courage."

"That's not very Slytherin of you." Neville's voice is halfway disgusted.

"It's very un-Malfoy, too." Draco picks up a roll of bandage and sits down to wrap his hand.

Neville looks at him, blood trailing his arm, and tries to read him. "You 'round the bend?" It is the last of his innocent self that asks such a loaded question.

Draco unrolls a length of bandage and cuts it precisely. "Most likely." He spits on his hand to loosen the blood and goes to wipe it on his robes.

"Stop." Neville is up and across the room for a clean rag and warm water before he thinks. The lessons he gets as a Medi-Wizard when he's not out in the war make him react on instinct. He walks back over to Draco and cleans the gash carefully. "I can't heal this. To much magic could give us away."

"I don't care." Draco watches with no interest as Neville bandages his hand and turns it over to inspect his work.

"You'll live." Neville looks in Draco's eyes and sees a gaping void where a spark used to be. He worries that it's not there. It was a rude, cruel, self-centered spark, but it was a spark. "Draco?"

"What?"

"Did you ever think you'd live past the war?" Neville has a feeling he knows the answer, but something in him still twists at Draco's negative head shake. "Why not?"

Draco says nothing. He just rolls up his sleeves and displays two scars running up his forearms. These marks, Neville can tell, are also not fresh. They're also not the only ones. The faintest of lines show up just beside them.

"How many times?"

"Not enough."

Neville remembers being depressed at fifteen. He was awkward and stupid and funny-looking and he'd sat in his room for hours mooning over nothing. His Gran had come in just once, told him he was the kind of boy with a very sweet heart and kissed him on the top of the head. It hadn't cured him, but it had helped. He looked at Draco, knowing that sweet and kind were not words to use. "You're a bastard, you know." Draco gives him a mildly confused look. "You're a bastard and a prat, and yanking me in front of you was about as low as you can get." Neville picks up his wand. "You're certainly a Malfoy. He presses the tip of his wand against he soft flesh of Draco's hand and opens a one-inch wound.

Draco makes a choking noise but makes no other noise and says nothing. He sits in his chair and watches blood drip on his robes.

Neville wonders if Draco was right, if maybe Draco got the last of the goodness in his blood and gave him the ability to hurt people. He doesn't ask. He just lays his wand down and leaves Draco to bleed.


End file.
